I'll Be OK
by SimonKilnsworth
Summary: We live in the rain...


**Hi!**

 **This little bit of introspective narrative is brought to you by the thought, "If Asriel could sing, he would sing like Jonny Hawkins of Nothing More, because a lot of their songs fit his story and where I plan to go with it" and gives a little more detail to the goat boi's thought process at the end of Another Undertale that I wrote one morning while listening to the song this story is named after on loop.**

 **That said, I've been quiet for about a month now. New story's going. I'm not nearly as far along with it as I'd like to be, but those are my own ridiculously high expectations. I've decided to shoot for starting to post it on my 2 year anniversary of writing (Nov. 9** **th** **) because I'm fairly certain that by then I should have it in a state where I'll be pretty confident I can keep up a consistent schedule with it. Other than that, one or two more sporadic things may pop up in the meantime that I've been mulling.**

 **Yeah! (I hate seasons. I have a head cold right now…)**

* * *

When I asked my Mom for a pen and some paper, I didn't think I would ever escape her questions. I can't say I was ever one known to write down my thoughts, and so she was very curious to find out what I had finally deemed worthy of the occasion. I can tell she still had a lot of questions about what had happened, even if she did hold back from asking them outright, but I'm just not comfortable telling them everything yet. I will one day, that I do promise, but not yet. I've told them all enough, though, that she seems to at least understand why I don't want to talk about it, but because of that her fall-back solution is to hover.

Same old Mom.

It was hard enough just getting away from Ryan. He tries to act aloof while clinging to me worse than either of my parents ever had the first time I was alive. Not that I mind. It's a bit of a relief having at least one who knows everything I've done and still accepts me. I feel at peace when he's nearby, like this all feels less wrong. But some things need to be done in solitude, and trying to find time to myself tonight was harder than trying to convince Chara to… No, I promised myself I would move on.

Eventually I just told him what I wanted to do, fearing slightly that he would try to get me to just tell him I wanted to put down for myself, but thankfully he seemed to understand as well and went off to have a drink with some of the others.

It's funny… Now that I'm finally alone, I find myself very much wanting to forego this and join them, but I decided this is something I need to do. Sort out my thoughts in case I ever doubt them in the future. But now I don't even know where to begin. Should I start with what it felt like waking up in throne room the first time, numb to the world not only physically, but in my mind as well? Should I describe the jumbled fragments from ten thousand, thousand timelines? Would that help me atone, to put it on paper? Or do I keep the 'what if's locked away in my head like so many others do…?

I suppose I should just start with today, since that feels like the real beginning.

Today has been a day of impossibilities. It feels strange admitting that after spending so much time believing in those insurmountable walls between what could be and what could not, spending an eternity test it, straining it, and being defeated by it until I was certain of its bounds, familiar with every inch of its surface as if it were a lover that I had memorized every facet of their form so that I may feel them even when we were apart. But now all of that has been turned on its head so thoroughly that I think that every time I blink I'll suddenly find myself back within those bounds – that cage – and find all that has happened to be just another lie.

I hope one day that this feeling will fade, but at the same time I hope it never does, because to feel anything at all is its own impossibility. To lose a part of that, any part of that, good or bad, would be an injustice to the miracle that allowed me here, to allow me to be 'me' again.

But I'm not 'me' in the sense that everyone believes I am. I'm not the Asriel from so many lifetimes ago, but I am no longer Flowey either. I almost feel like I should take on a new name again, that stealing 'Asriel' will only do the memory of those days yet another injustice. Ryan reminds me that we all change as we grow, that none of us would match up if held against our younger selves, but my case feels different – disjointed. Nevertheless, I have decided to take up the name Asriel once more, and hopefully I can properly explain why I made that choice as well as a few other things within these pages.

When I first took up the power of everyone's souls, I was so deadened to emotion by that point that I did not feel it even as it completely surrounded me. How could I? My mind could no longer process their feelings as anything more than a burning fire that I used simply to drive me onward in my own determined task. But when Ryan finally made me remember the real reason behind how all of this started, my own compassion and sorrow returned, and all of that weight came crashing down on me. In a single instance, I remembered everything I had forgotten in death and in a thousand lifetimes since, and the weight of that guilt nearly crushed me.

I did, in that moment, the only thing I felt I still could: I set everything as right as I was able in my fumbling grasp of so much power, and then I ran, knowing the time before I returned to that deadened existence was short, too cowardly to end it all for good, too afraid of finding out that I still couldn't and end up erasing everything once more.

In the future, people may question the reasoning behind my actions in that moment after. Why would I stay to have one more conversation with my savoir? Was it really because I didn't want to let go, or did the habits of my old ways have something more devious in mind? In a way, I think my actions reflect a bit of both. I didn't want it to end, but I knew that it must. That is why I did what I did.

I wanted the one who saved me to see me for who I was in that last moment, or at least, who I wish I had been. He deserved at least that much for everything he had gone through, even though I stole his memories in the end so that he would let me go. Yet he found me anyway, adding to the already growing list of impossibilities the day had for me, and he offered me a way to come back with him. A real way to come back.

At first, I denied it, both its existence and its offer. Even if such a thing were possible, how could I take it after everything I had done? No, the only thing that should have been left for me was a death where I could hold on at least a little bit of myself. And yet, he convinced me that this was the better way, that there was still much to be done and that I should be there to see it, as a way to make amends. I didn't understand at first and I still don't feel like I really do, but I feel like I will, one day.

I had convinced myself to commit so many wrongs while I was a flower, or twisted so many truths into pessimistic malevolence that I saw the world as my play thing. Nothing was permanent; nothing lasted forever, so why care about what I did? Why try to strive for any sort of good if time will merely erode it to nothing anyway? I performed so many atrocities under this logic, atrocities only I will ever remember. So when I was offered a second chance, a new life, the question that rang in my head louder than any other was how? After living my life like that for so long, how could I possibly learn to love again?

But then I realized that I had never truly forgotten. It had simply become twisted by time like everything else. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that justifies any of what I did, but that is why I decided to come back, to try again, one last time. Ryan said he would help remind me what it meant to be a monster, and to be a monster is to love, unconditionally. It is to love first and above all else, for how else can a monster live when love is such a large part of what we are made out of? That is how I can learn to forgive myself, and in turn be forgiven.

I am not the only one to have forgotten this. If monsters and humans truly are one and the same like Ryan believes, then they are just as capable of loving the way we do. I see now what my place is in the world: to remind all of what I now know. That even though life will throw hardships at us, and we may be tested more than we have been tested before, the only mistake we could ever make moving forward is to not love with every step we take.

I know this to be the truth now. Not some poisoned truth like those of my past, but a truth to be proud of, a truth I can put everything I have behind. So even though doubts may surface in the coming days, even thought the darkness may return and I'll look to these pages to try to remember why I even bothered in the first place, I know, without a doubt, that in the end it will all work out.

That I'll be okay.


End file.
